So you’ve taken the shot. Is that it? Certainly not. In the world of digitalphotography, you can use a wide variety of techniques to “bring out” the bestpicture possible from the shot you’ve taken. You might be wondering, “Howis that possible?” Well, in order to explain that, we should provide some background

on how cameras differ from our own brains.The human brain can process more color range at any given instant than acomputer monitor or a digital print can display. Our eyes don’t actually seemore range than film or digital sensors; rather, our brain instructs our eyesto composite different areas of the image into a single whole. The brain doesthis “multiple-exposure” blending so quickly that we think we are looking atonly one image.

The camera, on the other hand, doesn’t have our brain inside. It records onlyone instant in time, which is why we are often so disappointed when we lookat a base picture. (“That’s not how I remember the color and the details!”)And it gets worse: cameras are notorious for losing all the little details in thehighlights and shadows of a shot. Thankfully, we can use the camera andthe computer to minimize these deficiencies, and bring out a wider range ofbrightness and colors in each of our digital photographs.